Ben Affleck is Batman

[Catwoman]

So I was lurking in that cesspool that's called Superhero Hype, and I see some naysayers complaining how they thought Affleck's Bruce was cold-hearted and didn't care about people.

Really? What about when he called the Wayne Financial employee to evacuate everybody in the building during the Metropolis incident? What about when he came to Wallace Keefe's rescue, who was trapped under the rubble, and saved the little girl from getting crushed to death moments later? What about when he frantically did everything he could to prevent Anatoli Knyazev and company from murdering Clark's mother? Like it or not, the whole reason Batman was wrongfully against Superman was because he was afraid that he could turn against the human race.

But let's ignore all of that because Batman kills criminals. Never the mind the fact the criminals themselves were cold blooded murderers themselves (and in some cases, sexual predators).

That doesn't matter. Them being that doesn't change anything. Caring about some people doesn't mean he wasn't cold hearted. The fact that he can purposefully murder people with no remorse or guilt shows that. Have a very great day!

God bless you! God bless everyone!

Are you f***ing serious? Cold-heartedness has nothing to do with what Batman does to criminals. It may be cool towards the villains but it's shown clearly that Bruce cares deeply for good people. Hence his willingness to risk almost certain death to stop Superman, who he fears will hurt those people.

And don't bother wishing me a good day, because I won't have one anyway. Save you some typing.

[The Dark Knight]

Being cruel is different than taking a person's life. That's what's cold hearted.

You miss the point. Thus you are wasting my time.

[Dagenspear]

You miss the point. Thus you are wasting my time.

That's the point. Murderers or not, bad people or not, it's still cold hearted in this particular instance.

Are you f***ing serious? Cold-heartedness has nothing to do with what Batman does to criminals. It may be cool towards the villains but it's shown clearly that Bruce cares deeply for good people. Hence his willingness to risk almost certain death to stop Superman, who he fears will hurt those people.

And don't bother wishing me a good day, because I won't have one anyway. Save you some typing.

Cold-heartedness, to me anyway, has everything to do with him murdering criminals. He can care about people. But that doesn't change what he's done. I'm very sorry that you won't have a good day, particularly if I had something to do with it. But I wish you both a very good day anyway.

God bless you both! God bless everyone!

[The Dark Knight]

[Travesty]

That's what I've been saying for awhile. Trying to debate this movie is just an endless loop of circular logic that's bolstered on semantics.

[Wayne49]

These are issues audiences get into because of Snyder's style of story telling. He has a Rob Zombie sensibility to him when it comes to depicting moments that otherwise would have been downplayed or made ambiguous as to the fate of the criminal who was inflicted. Snyder is very much a in-your-face director who wants to roll in the gratuitous violence of a moment. If you read his assessment of comics, he says they are without merit unless they have violence and sex in them. So this attitude is certainly catered to in any film he makes. 

So while we can technically suggest his portrayal of Batman is not inconsistent with historical context, it can certainly be said, his intent to highlight those graphic aspects are much more on display which can work against the morality moments when he saves others. When Snyder chooses to amp up those moments of violence, it makes the audience give pause since the attention was not on stopping the criminal but rather the nature of how he takes him down with a degree of exploitation in the act. That denotes a type of pleasure which the director is taking in that scene which is easy to transpose to the character.

One point of view is to embrace that and say it's a more honest interpretation of the dark knight portrayal. Another point of view is that extremity in depiction overshadows and dilutes his qualities as being someone who is morally driven which is where the average person tends to define or justify the actions of someone they hold to a standard. If we can be honest and say Snyder took on the Batman personality as a full blown psychosis that is predicated more on instability born from emotional scarring, then we can't really counterbalance that with the suggestion he can always properly rationalize moments when he's having to define everyone in a situation as good or bad. It's emotional, thus making him irrational.

So , for myself, this is why I don't like Snyder making these films. He parlays too much personal enjoyment for graphic violence into this pseudo-psychological suggestion that is really just there as an excuse to do what he wants to do. Translation: The concept of Batman gets more than a little top heavy when the viewer has to embrace graphic violence in a world where they are already having to suspend their disbelief to accept the character as presented. He's dressed up as a bat driving a military show car. This is a full on comic book. I think the expectation is to service it as such and not dilute it into an endurance contest filled with treatments that run contradictory to the reason why we celebrate these heroes. We can forgive Deadpool for blowing the heads off of villains with one shot because there is no pretext to a standard which demands a code of conduct. Batman is held to a higher standard. And if we want to be completely truthful he's there to sell lots of merchandise with the primary customer being the kids.

If we can go 15 rounds over the nature of Batman's motivations, then I think that by itself is proof positive Snyder didn't do his job and deliver a hero so much as a conflicted character that audiences don't agree with. Everyone is certainly entitled to embrace this or reject the material since it's all fictional in nature. But history definitely shows that Batman tends to play to a broader audience when he is layered with more positive motivations than those more associated with the villains. When the primary question becomes, 'Why did Batman kill those people" the director has placed himself (and the studio) in a unfortunate corner they will have to resolve.

[The Dark Knight]

Thing is, there's a lot of buffoons out there who simply don't understand the message of the movie. The Batman of BvS has gone down a dark path. He's overcompensating because he feels threatened. He almost feels redundant by the presence of Superman. Alfred says it best in the film. A good man turned cruel due to a sense of powerlessness. This is deliberately a Batman who has said 'F you' to any moral codes he abided by in the past. That's why Superman is only taking serious notice now, and why he feels so concerned by Batman's methods. That's why The Joker and his kind are still alive, and why they wouldn't be these days if they ever met again.

A clear character arc for Batman is there, yet Snyder is raked over the coals because he's meant to be a simpleton who had Batman kill because 'he thinks it looks cool'. The issue, not that it really is an issue, is partly resolved when Batman chooses not to brand Lex. He's an experienced pro, yes, but we're at the start of this journey he's going on. He wasn't meant to be a likeable chap here. This was the jaded, angry and almost suicidal man at the end of his rope. Now he's inspired and with renewed purpose.

[Wayne49]

Thing is, there's a lot of buffoons out there who simply don't understand the message of the movie. The Batman of BvS has gone down a dark path. He's overcompensating because he feels threatened. He almost feels redundant by the presence of Superman. Alfred says it best in the film. A good man turned cruel due to a sense of powerlessness. This is deliberately a Batman who has said 'F you' to any moral codes he abided by in the past. That's why Superman is only taking serious notice now, and why he feels so concerned by Batman's methods. That's why The Joker and his kind are still alive, and why they wouldn't be these days if they ever met again.

A clear character arc for Batman is there, yet Snyder is raked over the coals because he's meant to be a simpleton who had Batman kill because 'he thinks it looks cool'. The issue, not that it really is an issue, is partly resolved when Batman chooses not to brand Lex. He's an experienced pro, yes, but we're at the start of this journey he's going on. He wasn't meant to be a likeable chap here. This was the jaded, angry and almost suicidal man at the end of his rope. Now he's inspired and with renewed purpose.

This is the political dance directors get into with the public when they go against type and parlay into a less supported portrayal. If we look at history, this reaction carries a degree of deja vu with Schumacher's last installment. Joel's treatment went completely "light", while Snyder's interpretation went for a decidedly darker and more disturbed perspective. I wouldn't suggest the public desires a dumbed down version since the Schumacher example cancels out that approach. But then again, I don't believe their looking for a Dirty Harry version to correct that perspective either. Nolan's movies have been the most successful in the franchise' history and those were not exactly kid films. But then again I don't think they disenfranchised kids from watching them either. So it was inclusive enough to receive widespread popularity during it's theatrical run.

I think when it comes to Batman, quality of script is a big player in how people react to each film. When I see the most successful films in the franchise, those stories are heavy on drama but seem to do a good job in explaining character motivations that thrust the hero and the villain into a face off. There's good tension and a build towards a finale that is galvanizing to the audience.

The less successful installments tend to be less defined on character motivation; their tone is uneven; and the purpose for why the opposing sides are at odds are either overly simplistic or muddled in ambiguous story plots that do not generate interest in the outcome. History seems to suggest that audiences like a Batman character they can root for in the face of obstacles set directly or indirectly by the counter player in question.

In the case of BVS, I think Snyder gave us a Batman morally flawed which gambled a bit on the perspective being universally understood and supported by the audience. I don't think Snyder spent enough time building some pathos into this Batman to garner some much needed understanding for his actions. I think audiences are motivated and engaged when they connect with them emotionally on some level. For this Batman to be that jaded, I don't think the audience had the benefit of seeing that journey so much as getting momentary references that were informational but did not necessarily carry the emotional register audiences need to get them to where he was at. So I think to the average viewer, people had to determine merit within his actions based on a cold slate of story points rather than an emotional one that would have serviced the material better.

I think that point is further driven home when Snyder uses the "Martha" exchange as that moment of awakening. There's nothing difficult to understand in that moment in terms of intent, but for me it seriously devalues his life experience as Batman to suggest a moment of empathy makes him a changed man over the years of loss he has suffered. That is an impossible leap of rationalization to arrive at during a very irrational moment in the midst of a struggle to survive. When you consider this as being an older Batman nearing the end of his career that really discredits the possibility. It completely took me out of the story because it was too much of a staged plot point as opposed to a more logical unfolding of events which would lead to this discovery on an emotional level. You needed the audience to feel it with him and I think a more accomplished director could have crafted a better progression of events to get everyone there. I just don't think Snyder was the right person to direct this material.

This movie wanted to be allot of things for allot of reasons. It wanted to be a new Batman film with a complex hero, that needed far more script development than what was offered. It needed to be a sequel to Man of Steel, which it was, but didn't really service his evolution fully (Yes, I know it's coming). Then it needed to be a welcoming mat for the Justice League movie so they did little more than Youtube cameos for those introductions while throwing dream sequences into the story that did more to disrupt the pacing than contribute to the overall intent. And along the way they also needed a villain to do ugly things even though the heroes were already doing that to themselves (provoked by Lex of course) . Personally I think it had more script and more evolution of characters than what they could realistically fit into the finished product at that running time. And that's why I said in my initial review on another thread, I think I really need to see that director's cut before I come to a final assessment on this film.

But what we got in theaters was really a mixed bag of ambitious stories that, in my opinion, didn't get flushed out fully to appreciate them on the level they were written to be properly experienced.

[Dagenspear]

Thing is, there's a lot of buffoons out there who simply don't understand the message of the movie. The Batman of BvS has gone down a dark path. He's overcompensating because he feels threatened. He almost feels redundant by the presence of Superman. Alfred says it best in the film. A good man turned cruel due to a sense of powerlessness. This is deliberately a Batman who has said 'F you' to any moral codes he abided by in the past. That's why Superman is only taking serious notice now, and why he feels so concerned by Batman's methods. That's why The Joker and his kind are still alive, and why they wouldn't be these days if they ever met again.

Insults against people over a movie isn't appropriate. People get it and they understand the message. They just think the message is stupid. They don't want that, see why it's needed and to some people, a Batman who has in cold blood murdered nameless thugs has no justification to not kill the Joker after he's done it. Being a Christian, I see that's not true. But this is fiction. And Superman dying that Bruce had no relationship with has no reason to change his outlook, in real life or not.

A clear character arc for Batman is there, yet Snyder is raked over the coals because he's meant to be a simpleton who had Batman kill because 'he thinks it looks cool'. The issue, not that it really is an issue, is partly resolved when Batman chooses not to brand Lex. He's an experienced pro, yes, but we're at the start of this journey he's going on. He wasn't meant to be a likeable chap here. This was the jaded, angry and almost suicidal man at the end of his rope. Now he's inspired and with renewed purpose.

It is done because he thinks it's cool. It being resolved doesn't change that. People don't see why Batman ever had to be this. More importantly, they didn't want a Batman to be like this. He's not someone they can root for. Have a very great day!

God bless you! God bless everyone!

[johnnygobbs]

I'm finding the nastiness on both sides of the BvS divide quite depressing.  Like Dagenspear says, it's only a movie.  There is no need for anyone, either fan or critic of BvS, to name-call anyone who disagrees with them.